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I've just rung in the new year in Kyoto.
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I don't know about you, but 2023 has been a rough year. Globally, but also personally. I ran away to Japan in the hopes that perhaps the year couldn't follow me, but it did: I caught Covid while I was here, losing a good chunk of my escape to the sad grey walls of my hotel room.
A lot of this trip didn't go as planned. When booking the tickets, I'd said how much I wanted to spend New Year's at Fushimi Inari in Kyoto. Talked it up for the weeks I'd spent planning this trip. And when the night finally came, we nearly got rained out.
The drizzle that started as we dove into a noodle shop for our New Year's soba transformed into a heavy soaking rain by the time we finished eating. We walked to the shrine and mounted the many, many steps, slowly, cautiously planting each step so as not to slip on the ancient stone. An hour out from midnight, we decided we would stick it through, that we would ring in the new year huddled together under a tarp, avoiding the worst of the storm. It was better than sitting in our hostel's kitchen.
In 2024, I'll be taking a break from running my Patreon. I posted an update about it, so if you want you can read that. Likely you knew I had a Patreon. But it's equally likely you didn't. Or that you forgot. This is reasonable. I've barely talked about it lately, outside of a close circle of friends.
I've been thinking about my relationship to my creative work. I don't talk about it much, not outside of the friends who are already on board with what I'm doing. And why not? Am I not proud of the work I'm doing? Am I not happy with my writing? Why don't I want to share what I'm doing?
Because I'm afraid.
And yes, I'm afraid of both censure and praise, in equal measure. That's a cliche at this point. Every artist is afraid of these things. But I'm also afraid of a secret third thing.
“It has to be perfect. It has to be irreproachable in every way.”
“Why?” she said.
“To make up for it,” I said. “To make up for the fact that it’s me.”
- Suzanne Rivecca
I've stopped feeling like I deserve to take up space, and this is a dangerous feeling for an artist to have, because it's a feeling rooted in shame. Not shame in your work, but shame in yourself.
There are a lot of toxic feelings artists deal with. Jealousy, resentment, pride, spite. But shame stands apart from these for one sharp and cutting reason: where the others can move you forward, where the others can drive to action, shame halts. It demands silence, smallness, the erasure of self.
I don't really know how to fix this. But I do know shame doesn't get fixed by indulging it.
As a first step, I'm going to be centering creative play. This means I'm going to probably be making more videos. Doing film photography. Who knows what else. Definitely writing, that won't stop, but with less of a focus on projects and more of a focus on play. Maybe you can come to expect more newsletters from me, maybe this can be a space to play too.
On our rainy New Year's Eve, at the end of a long string of torii gates, we waited for midnight so we could go home and get warm. We decided that, rather than let the rain win, we'd stick it out. We wouldn't let the rain ruin our night.
The rain let up. A food stall opened, serving us hot amazake and steamy, stewy oden. More and more people made it up to the shrine, warmth and laughter everywhere we looked. It tipped into midnight, and we were surrounded by cries of "Happy New Year!" (in Japanese, of course), and we clinked our glasses together and shared sips of sake.
Is there a lesson here? I don't know. But I'm happy I waited out the rain last night.
- Carrie
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